Woman Jumps Into Lagoon From Maza-Maza Bridge in Lagos (Photo)

Lagos State has recorded another incident of suicide following the demise of a medical doctor who killed himself by jumping over the third mainland bride and drowning in water.

The victim in question

An unidentified woman jumped into the lagoon, in the Maza-Maza area of Lagos. She was lucky, as help came before she could drown.

The woman jumped into the lagoon from Maza-Maza Bridge in the Mile 2 area to the shock of people around. The woman was however, lucky, as rescuers fished her out before it was late.

According to a witness, the woman, dressed in a blouse and trousers, was trekking and got to the middle of the bridge, climbed the rail and jumped.

“The thing happened so fast that we could not stop her. However, when she jumped, we called for help, prompting people under the bridge to dive in and rescue her,” said one of the witnesses, who gave his name as Emeka.

When Daily Sun got the the scene, the woman was lying unconscious by the shore of the lagoon, while her rescuers tried to press her bloated stomach to expel the excess water she took in before her rescue.

Adewale, one of those who rescued her, said: “We were under the bridge, when suddenly the woman’s body dropped from the bridge. At first, we thought she was either pushed over or fell over by mistake. We had to jump into the river and went for her. That was how we rescued her.”

What would make people take their lives or attempt to commit suicide? A psychologist, Alex Lickerman, writing in an online site, Psychology Today, identified six things that could make a man or woman attempt suicide.

He wrote: “In general, people try to kill themselves for six reasons:

“They’re depressed: This is without question the most common reason people commit suicide. Severe depression is always accompanied by a pervasive sense of suffering as well as the belief that escape from it is hopeless. The pain of existence often becomes too much for severely depressed people to bear.

“They’re psychotic: Malevolent inner voices often command self-destruction for unintelligible reasons. Psychosis is much harder to mask than depression, and is arguably even more tragic. The worldwide incidence of schizophrenia is one per cent and often strikes otherwise healthy, high-performing individuals, whose lives, though manageable with medication, never fulfill their original promise.

“They’re impulsive: Often related to drugs and alcohol, some people become maudlin and impulsively attempt to end their own lives. Once sobered and calmed, these people usually feel emphatically ashamed. The remorse is often genuine, but whether or not they’ll ever attempt suicide again is unpredictable. They may try it again the very next time they become drunk or high, or never again in their lifetime.

“They’re crying out for help, and don’t know how else to get it. These people don’t usually want to die but do want to alert those around them that something is seriously wrong. They often don’t believe they will die, frequently choosing methods they don’t think can kill them in order to strike out at someone who’s hurt them, but they are sometimes tragically misinformed.

“They have a philosophical desire to die: The decision to commit suicide for some is based on a reasoned decision, often motivated by the presence of a painful terminal illness from which little to no hope of reprieve exists. These people aren’t depressed, psychotic, maudlin, or crying out for help. They’re trying to take control of their destiny and alleviate their own suffering, which usually can only be done in death. They often look at their choice to commit suicide as a way to shorten a dying that will happen regardless.

“They’ve made a mistake: This is a recent, tragic phenomenon in which typically young people flirt with oxygen deprivation for the high it brings and simply go too far. The only defense against this, it seems to me, is education.”